The Fastest Flying Taco

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

The Fastest Flying Taco

We aren’t supposed to play with our food, and we’re definitely not supposed to throw it. So these guys really broke the rules: they built a cannon that launches tacos. The Voodoo Taco restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska fires foil-wrapped tacos into the air like cannonballs. They built it to send food to hungry fans at University of Nebraska-Omaha hockey games. Also, a cannon built in Austin, Texas in 2012 could rapid-fire 12 tacos in a row before refilling, and they’d fly 200 feet. If you can stop watching the game and look up in the sky, you could catch your next dinner.

Wee ones: If the cannon shoots 5 tacos into the air, what numbers do you say to count them?

Little kids: If you’ve launched the first 9 tacos out of 12, how many more do you need to launch? Bonus: Which flies faster, a taco flying 42 miles an hour or a taco flying 45 miles an hour?

Big kids: If the user launches a set of 12 tacos, refills the cannon and launches the next 12, how many tacos fly through the air? Bonus: If 1/4 of those are caught by lucky fans, how many get caught?

The sky’s the limit: If you launch 3 tacos and the 1st travels 300 feet, the 2nd travels 80 feet, and the 3rd lands halfway between them, how far does the 3rd taco fly?

Answers:Wee ones: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Little kids: 3 more tacos. Bonus: The 45-mile-an-hour one.

Big kids: 24 tacos. Bonus: 6 tacos.

The sky’s the limit: 190 feet. The tacos land 220 feet apart, so a taco landing halfway will land 110 feet past the closer one and 110 feet closer than the farther one.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking while still in diapers, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.